Joe Iosbaker

Joe Iosbaker is a 20 year civil service employee at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).  Last year he was chosen Staff Person of the Year by the students in the College of Medicine where he had worked.

At UIC, Joe is the chief steward for 1300 clerical workers in the Service Employees International Union Local 73.  He is also on the executive board of the union.  In the 1990s, the workers at UIC, mostly Black and Latino, fought to win wage parity with the University’s mostly white work force at their downstate campus in Urbana.  Joe played a leading role in this struggle.Joe is the advisor to the campus chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society, and was the Chicago bus coordinator for the protest at the Republican National Convention in 2008.Joe has been active in struggles for social justice since 1977.  Joe is married to Stephanie Weiner.  They have two sons.  Joe and Stephanie moved to Chicago in the mid 1980s to support the movement for Black and Latino political empowerment after Harold Washington was elected mayor.